Understanding terrorism

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Marichiko, you just don't want to understand that Slang apparently is not alone in certain opinions. If you're going to make jokes, use smilier smilies or I'm likely to assume you're being as straightfaced as I am.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Marichiko, you just don't want to understand that Slang apparently is not alone in certain opinions. If you're going to make jokes, use smilier smilies or I'm likely to assume you're being as straightfaced as I am.

Now there is a terrifying thought, indeed. Hopefully, they won't be letting you out any time too soon, and I refuse to smile when I write this.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

While Vietnam may not at this time have democracy, we can take comfort in that it really doesn't have Communism either, big C or small, except as a sort of state religion you're supposed to believe in if you want a job in government. On the streets it's capitalism and small businesses.

WE who, white boy? I sit at The Wall in DC, trace my fingers on certain names etched in stone, never to hear that man's voice again, never to see his smile, and I am to take comfort in the thought that some street vendor in Saigon is selling wrist watches made in China? Sorry, pal. The soldiers who gave their lives deserve better than that cheap plastic watch sold in the name of the state religion of ANYTHING, be it communism, Mohammed, or Jesus. Nope, thats not what my Dad and my friends fought for (and some died for) during the Tet Offensive, or any other encounter in that miserable, sorry excuse of a waste of American lives. How dare you make so light of their sacrifices?

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Widebody jetliners into large buildings is a credible threat, to anyone who comprehends credible threats. Why would anyone set the bar higher?

Excellent question. Go to the head of the class! Where is Bin Laden? Iraq? BBBZZZZZT! WRONG! Of what family is Bin Laden from? Saddam's? Nope, wrong again. Go to the back of the class, after all. WHY AREN'T WE GOING AFTER BIN LADEN? HELLO? AS someone who was involved in military intelligence and covert ops, aren't you the slightest bit puzzled over what the hell we are doing in Iraq? Give me a break, if we were going to invade ANY country in retribution for 9/11, would it not be Saudi Arabia? Is not Bin Laden a member of the House of Saud? When is the last time the Saudi's had a democratic election to pick out their king, since you are so worried about democracy, hmmmm? Its as if after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we decided to declare war on New Zealand. What the hell? Close enough!

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

This is why my manner indicates contempt. You can't back up the convictions your post says you hold, name or no name. If you think my book is crayon (not that you believe even that), you think terribly poorly, which is par for the antiwar types in here. They may satisfy themselves with their "reasons" to undermine and fail at this war on tyranny -- but their reasons don't satisfy me.

Took the very words out of my mouth. You cannot back up your convictions. You advocate a generalized blood bath which does nothing to bring to justice the perp behind 9/11, you tell us Vietnam was a worthy sacrifice of American lives because some street vendor over there gets to sell a couple of bannana's, and you complain of failing "at this war on tyranny." NO SHIT SHERLOCK! Try going after the tyrants for a change, how about? Granted, Saddam was a tyrant, but the fucking world is chock full of tyrants! The US neither can nor should go out to war against all of them. The proper function of the military in a DEMOCRACY is to defend the country's own borders. Did the Iraqi's send the planes into those towers? Hello? NO! WHY AREN'T WE GOING AFTER THE TYRANT RESPONSIBLE FOR ATTACKING OUR COUNTRY??????????????????????

I'm waiting, Mr. Democracy, and why the hell don't you put your body where your mouth is and go fight some Iraqi "insurgents," since you are so god damn gung ho about killing prople? Go kill 'em already, why are you wasting your time here?

[Trilby]

..I'd like to teach the world to chill and something Coca-Cola....

[richlevy]

Urbane, you seem to be splitting up your posts. Is this one for each personality?

As for denial, you are the one who seems to be whipsawing back and forth between Al-Queda and Saddam. My point was that the war in Iraq was not part of the war on terror. You seem to agree with that point and criticize my opinion at the same time.

Want to fight tyrants? Let's make a list and throw in Myanmar, Congo, and at least a dozen more. We'll leave off North Korea and Iran, since they may actually have nukes and paradoxically cannot be invaded by us. It's sort of like the idea of only loaning money to people who don't need it. You can only invade countries which threaten you with nukes if they don't actually have them.

I love your sterotype of liberals. At the same time that you go into a harangue about the concept of everyone thinking every neo-con is stupid enough to believe the Saddam-9/11 connection, while that is what your post appeared to support, you of course paint liberals with a broad brush.

My personal preference is that instead of 30,000 soldiers in Afghanistan looking for Bin Laden and 160,000 in Iraq, we have 200,000 soldiers in Afgahnistan looking for Bin Laden. My way would probably result in getting the 'tyrant' who actually attacked us. That's hardly being 'soft' on tyrants.

I support and defend my Constitution. I hold my leaders accountable. I do not sit on my ass humming patriotic tunes and playing "don't ask, don't tell" with politics. A soldier does his duty by following orders. A citizen does his duty by questioning authority and insuring that Congress has the consent of the governed. You seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about every tinpot foreign tyrant in the world. I worry about us raising one here, or setting the stage for one in the future.

If it were only your ass on the line, I'd love to let you dress up and go out there to shoot something. Unfortunately, there are a quarter of a million men and women who are expecting to be sent to the right place at the right time and with the right equipment and support. We let them down this time. They did not have to go to Iraq. There were no weapons pointed our way. We have changed their mission and they are doing the best that they can with where we have placed them.

Right now you can say it was worth it. I wish you were younger and had a classification where you actually got shot at, so you could come back and tell me if that is really true.

For some reason you have become infected with Heinlein syndrome. This malignent disease results in the idea that veterans are automatically better citizens than civilians.

Hear, hear, Rich! Right on! I am not a veteran, but as a soldier's daughter I spent age 13 -14 and again, age 16 - 17 glued to the TV every night when CBS Evening News would come on with its Vietnam war footage. It took 10 days back then for a letter from Vietnam to reach the US. My Dad wrote me every day he possibly could, so I'd know he'd been alive 10 days before. I'd scan the faces on the clips aired by CBS anxiously looking for my father's - was he dead? Wounded? And for what just cause? In what honorable fight?

I live in a military town, and certain businesses here hang large banners proclaiming, "WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!" Bullshit! These folks are just in the business of ripping off soldiers they know will be in Iraq in a few months and will have other things on their mind than to complain about being ripped off.

UG is the sort of sociopath who climbs out of the woodwork drooling bloodlust and passes it off as patriotism. Anyone who cares about this country will ask what the hell we are doing in Iraq? Anyone who wants to prevent further 9/11's will go after the man responsible, not the people who weren't. Anyone who honestly "supports our troops" will be horrified that they are being sent off to fight and die in a game of smoke and mirrors. The fiasco in Iraq is at best a display of criminal incompetance on the part of the leaders of this country and, at worst, evidence of an uncaring, self-serving desire to hold on to the reins of power and win elections, our soldiers and our people and our country be damned.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The voice of unreason as usual, Marichiko.

WE who, white boy? I sit at The Wall in DC, trace my fingers on certain names etched in stone, never to hear that man's voice again, never to see his smile, and I am to take comfort in the thought that some street vendor in Saigon is selling wrist watches made in China?

I've walked the Wall more than once myself. I've stood in the little pine grove near the Three Bronze Grunts (the nurse statue wasn't up yet) and played "Battle of the Somme" on my pipes. After I was done playing, some of the patch veterans that frequent the Wall came up and told me how much they'd liked it. There was more than one pair of misty eyes there that afternoon.

I bet they'd thank you if you went and did likewise. From a raw-beginner start, it would likely take you about eight to twelve months of practice to get you where you'd be ready to do it. Like any musical instrument, it's less the days of doing it than it is the hours.

How dare you make so light of their sacrifices?

That you'd like me to make light of their sacrifice is just one more reason that that will never happen. And taking your political ideas for action -- dubious, very very dubious. William F. Buckley and L. Brent Bozell (speaking, as we soon will, of "in the family") seem to me far more trustworthy.

AS someone who was involved in military intelligence and covert ops, aren't you the slightest bit puzzled over what the hell we are doing in Iraq?

Not remotely puzzled: I can see what it is we're trying to do. We are trying to make Islamoterrorism extinct by eliminating its natural breeding grounds: Islamic non-democracies. There's nothing in particular wrong with eliminating the weakest non-democracy first, and that was Iraq -- interesting, was it not, to note how few felt like dying for Saddam's régime? And those few, well, they died. Good riddance: a lack of lackeys emasculates tyrants.

We who were in the military intelligence community tend to differentiate strongly our understandings of what routine intelligence gathering and covert operations really are -- considering covert ops to be Special Warfare and the bailiwick of the Special Forces, the SEALs, Delta, and perhaps a few less publicized outfits of get-in-and-whack-'ems. We SIGINT guys -- well, it's good duty, but I'd be the last to call it exciting to watch: it's guys under headphones staring at equipment. Perhaps the nearest civilian equivalent to SIGINT is radio astronomy -- you're using the electromagnetic spectrum to tease out information that isn't necessarily meant for you, and you don't reach out and twiddle with what you're getting the information from. Covert operations? Only in the very broadest sense of covert, and not as used within the community.

. . .if we were going to invade ANY country in retribution for 9/11, would it not be Saudi Arabia?

Or shouldn't we be treating Saudi as an ally? They've been wiping out al-Qaeda sympathizers to the tune of five thousand arrested or dead. And since we've been this active in the region, elections are happening in Saudi too. Who'd've expected that development? Would we have expected it without the Iraq campaign? The people who try to find failure in all this don't strike me as honest, not at all. The House of Saud is walking a tightrope between their biggest markets on one side and the more idiotic sort of al-Wahabis on the other, but on balance they come down on our side because they know they'd be the poorer if they bowed to al-Wahab -- about as big a clench-butt in the Islamic world as the most tightassed fundie televangelists you can think of.

Is not Bin Laden a member of the House of Saud?

He is not. The bin Laden family is Yemeni in origin, and made the family fortune in construction -- in Saudi, where the money was. The bin Laden family don't like Osama very much at all, either. They treat him like a remittance man. This suggests they don't find him anything approaching reasonable themselves. Osama's what happens when you've got religious bigotry combined with tens of millions of dollars.

Good liberals ought to fight against religious bigots, shouldn't they? If they're actually good, I mean?

Its as if after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we decided to declare war on New Zealand. What the hell? Close enough!

This is the sort of raving that tells us you're wrapped considerably too tight, and that you think this makes your point demonstrates your want of wisdom.

You cannot back up your convictions.

Heh heh. Sez you; and I shall be delighted to prove you mistaken, and at length. Say, for the next forty years, by which time I'll be pushing ninety and may be bored with it.

. . .you tell us Vietnam was a worthy sacrifice of American lives. . .

Of course it was. Fights against tyrannies (and was North Vietnam anything but?) are worthy fights by definition. Check Augustine of Hippo on the topic. What was wrong with Vietnam was the strategy was in effect designed to lose, and the war was lost not in the hills of Vietnam but in the halls of Congress, to our shame. That the Saigon government was not exactly a model of either enlightenment or efficiency in no way invalidates the battle against Hanoi, as a quarter million Vietnamese refugees and boat people will happily and rightly tell you. And what's become of the Communist régime in Vietnam? Its communism has decayed, and will fairly soon be replaced by something more in accord with human nature, bit by quiet bit.

Granted, Saddam was a tyrant, but the fucking world is chock full of tyrants! The US neither can nor should go out to war against all of them.

As a strong believer in the goodness of human freedom, I find the first sentence flatly disproves the second. You see, I want a good world. That means a world with no tyrannies, nor tyranny's excesses. "All of them"? Eh, one at a time will suffice. The tender feelings of tyrants and their lackeys should receive no consideration beyond the mercy of a bullet through the skull, rather than say burning at the stake or just plain impalement, which doesn't consume firewood and if done Wallachian style, takes longer too. Blunted point, greased shaft. Considering where they stick it in, embarrassing too, though death per anum may well suit the irredeemably assholic.

The proper function of the military in a DEMOCRACY is to defend the country's own borders.

This is mistaken too. The proper function of a democracy's military is to defend that democracy's INTERESTS. These do not stop at the borders.

I'm waiting, Mr. Democracy, and why the hell don't you put your body where your mouth is and go fight some Iraqi "insurgents," since you are so god damn gung ho about killing prople? Go kill 'em already, why are you wasting your time here?

Well! The shriller you get, the more the madwoman you sound. You're saying "Mr. Democracy" as if it were a bad thing. I believe I've made it clear at least twice that I am now over military age, and yet have nine years more military service than you do. I've a wife with twenty and a retirement. You do not have any standing to screech about this; I've told you you're a lightweight, and that's why. What I'm doing here is one of two things: either converting you from your current error (I'd go so far as to call it a sin -- one I don't commit.) or leaving you as the sole and the only adherent to it: isolated in your error and your wrongfulness, while all the Cellar points at you and laughs.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Of course it was. Fights against tyrannies (and was North Vietnam anything but?) are worthy fights by definition. Check Augustine of Hippo on the topic. What was wrong with Vietnam was the strategy was in effect designed to lose, and the war was lost not in the hills of Vietnam but in the halls of Congress, to our shame. That the Saigon government was not exactly a model of either enlightenment or efficiency in no way invalidates the battle against Hanoi, as a quarter million Vietnamese refugees and boat people will happily and rightly tell you. And what's become of the Communist régime in Vietnam? Its communism has decayed, and will fairly soon be replaced by something more in accord with human nature, bit by quiet bit.

So over 50,000 dead, a war lost, and the former enemy is reforming itself without our military intervention, but through trade.

Sounds like an argument against war to me.

It's nice that you respect them, it's nice that you play the pipes for them, but the best result for them would not to be there in first place. I personally would like to see less walls and monuments and more living monuments with their friends and families.

War is sometimes necessary, but you have set the bar abysmally low.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Fights against tyrannies (and was North Vietnam anything but?) are worthy fights by definition. Check Augustine of Hippo on the topic. What was wrong with Vietnam was the strategy was in effect designed to lose, and the war was lost not in the hills of Vietnam but in the halls of Congress, to our shame. That the Saigon government was not exactly a model of either enlightenment or efficiency in no way invalidates the battle against Hanoi, as a quarter million Vietnamese refugees and boat people will happily and rightly tell you.

Obviously, if Hanoi and Vietnam was a hell hole, then those boat people are still coming in the millions. Just the other side of the fact that Rush Limbaugh and UG would forget to mention. Tyranny was not N Vietnam. One is suppose to learn history instead of rewriting it. Tyranny was the S Vietnamese government and its army.

But then we cite specific examples. Who asked to be made a protectorate of the US? Ho Chi Minh. Whose Declaration of Independence is an example copy of the US Declaration of Independence? Vietnam's.

Who was the enemy of the poeple? Who really were the freedom figthers that UG promotes? Unfortunately, the US government listened to militarists who had enlisted man intelligence - such as Gen William Westmoreland. The US lost that war because the US military commanders violated basic military principles and doctrine taught even in 500 BC. To his grave, Westmoreland refuse to admit HE was the problem - just like that 'dumb and directed' enlisted man who cannot learn on his own. An informed military man would have known that war was lost by the generals (and a just as myopic president) who were more enthrilled with their military hardware than in the purpose of war and the lessons of history.

Officers are suppose to first understand basic concepts such as what and why. The Vietnam war is a classic example of what happens when military leaders fail to define a strategic objective - and then lie to coverup their illegal war. This treachory at the highest levels of military and government officials is well documented in history. UG has demonstrated that his knowledge is more based in his militaristic emotions and not in first learning the lessons of history. UG has no idea why the Vietnam war was well understood as lost in the mid 1960s - by the officers on the ground. UG is encouraged to read what some of the toughest Marines in Vietnam learned that early on - David Halbersham's "Making of a Quagmire". Must reading for any enlisted man who intends to have an officer's education.

So just like in the "Misson Accomplished" war, even the intelligence was subverted to serve the lying leadership. According to military intelligence, we had killed everyone in Vietnam three times. But UG blames Congress. Its called rewriting history.

[lookout123]

listened to militarists who had enlisted man intelligence

enlisted man who intends to have an officer's education.

tw, do you actually believe that officers are more intelligent than the enlisted?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

TW, this is going to be fun. For me, anyway.

Originally Posted by tw

Obviously, if Hanoi and Vietnam was a hell hole, then those boat people are still coming in the millions.

The quarter million that did come are sufficient to prove my case, leaving zero justification for your views. They did not run to Hanoi, but away from it, and in some cases more than once. Communist Vietnam was a hell hole, and it improved once they stopped trying to practice Communism on the streets of Saigon (I will not name a city after Ho.).

Tyranny was not N Vietnam.

Those reeducation camps for South Vietnamese with the temerity not to like the Viet Nam Cong San were what? Summer camps for underprivileged urban kids? The fruits of some figment-tree of right-wing conspiracy, postwar? The penalty for being politically incorrect from Hanoi's point of view was mostly slow death and occasionally a quick one. This is the surest mark of a tyranny, and it is one you missed by half a parsec. That's pretty incompetent thinking, TW. Don't do that; I'll bite big raggedy chunks out of you every time.

One is suppose[d] to learn history instead of rewriting it.

You can't even copyedit as well as I do, yet you expect me to take you seriously as a thinker? The bar's a bit higher than that, TW. Meet it or lose.

But then we cite specific examples. Who asked to be made a protectorate of the US? Ho Chi Minh. Whose Declaration of Independence is an example copy of the US Declaration of Independence? Vietnam's.

This was Ho's move to find a power sponsor who could back him against the French. It's interesting, but after that, what? How much substance is there in might-have-beens?

But UG blames Congress. Its called rewriting history.

The blame does not fall on the armed forces. It falls on trying to fight a polite war, which was done in the nation's capital -- an error which today's Administration, having experience of Vietnam, is determined not to repeat. Neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson Administrations knew how to win Vietnam, and in the losing of Vietnam, the domino theory was vindicated also: South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and additionally Burma fell into darkness. That not all the available dominoes fell is just our, and their, good fortune, not a disproof of the concept.

TW, were I your history teacher, I'd give you a failing grade. You're bad at this.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

My point was that the war in Iraq was not part of the war on terror. You seem to agree with that point and criticize my opinion at the same time.

I do not agree with that point at all. They are one and the same. Those who want the war lost insist they are somehow separate, but you should know my views on that by now. From now on, please take it as read that I regard the Iraq campaign as an integral part of the War on Terror, part of that denial of breeding grounds I've so often mentioned.

The chappie who disses Heinlein does not understand what it takes to keep a Republic on the libertarian path -- hardly the path of wisdom, is it now?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

. . .evidence of an uncaring, self-serving desire to hold on to the reins of power and win elections, our soldiers and our people and our country be damned.

As neatly phrased an indictment of the Democratic Party's misbehavior and misplaced motivations as I've seen in months. I'd like to borrow it.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

As neatly phrased an indictment of the Democratic Party's misbehavior and misplaced motivations as I've seen in months. I'd like to borrow it.

Feel, free, UG. Borrow away. Your response to my points about Vietnam was that you got to go play your bagpipes at The Wall. That's nice. So, all those men died so you could go get your ego gratified at their national memorial? And what makes you think I know nothing of music and the time and dedication it takes to play music well? But that's a not the issue, now is it?

In response to my question of why are we not going after Bin Laden you respond that "There's nothing in particular wrong with eliminating the weakest non-democracy first, and that was Iraq." You have made my point for me. Bush took the easy way out and allowed the real culprit to remain at large.

Frankly, if the people of any given nation don't have the desire or will to rid themselves of dictators and tyrants, why should we spill our blood on their behalf? Let them reap their just reward as a nation and as a people. They'll figure it out - or not.

You may finally become bored at 90, but I have a short little span of attention and I am bored now, so I'll respond to you no further. I have better things to do with my time

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Feel, free, UG. Borrow away. Your response to my points about Vietnam was that you got to go play your bagpipes at The Wall. That's nice. So, all those men died so you could go get your ego gratified at their national memorial?

Dear, dear, dear, Marichiko. How monomaniacally unwilling you are to be fair. Everyone but you knows that is BS. Perhaps you should take up cultivating roses instead of trying to take me on, for you are palpably defeated this day, and your carryings-on are in vain.

Frothings from you aside, that's just my estimation of how much time and experience it would take to play the pipes well enough to do a good public performance. Most playing of the great Highland bagpipe out of doors is necessarily rather public anyway; there's no way to play the things softly, unless you count stationing the piper on one hilltop and his audience on the next one over.

Frankly, if the people of any given nation don't have the desire or will to rid themselves of dictators and tyrants, why should we spill our blood on their behalf? Let them reap their just reward as a nation and as a people. They'll figure it out - or not.

True enough -- if that were the case with the Kurds and the Shi'ites. Did not the both of them rise in revolt against Saddam? You don't revolt if you aren't oppressed, tyrannized, and generally living in a hell, which is exactly the situation when you're living under a dictator whose rise to power partook more of the nature of a mafioso than a U.S. President. I'd say they've got the desire and the will. Do you see Iraq changing course because the Rump Saddamites are leaving bent and blasted car parts all over? No you don't. Did not reporters before the war advise us that Iraqis from Baghdad, when the government minders weren't around, were privately telling them, and I quote, "If the Americans don't come, I'm going to kill myself." They were done with Saddam. True, they might have been done with Saddam eleven years before had we not been afraid of losing the Coalition and aided the rebellions to finish the job then, as the people who reckon Soldier of Fortune was right about it advocated, but in the end the tyrant is still fallen -- as much of his own misunderstandings of what he was doing and having done as anything we might accomplish in our campaign.

I shall assume that an unjust recompense for Iraq's travails as a nation would be the return of a Ba'athist dictatorship.

Bored, not going to answer further and better things to do with your time? I'm glad I've more honesty than to use such childish and transparent phrases to conceal an acknowledgement of defeat on the merits of the matter. I know the sound of a defeated America-should-lose-this-because-I-don't-want-liberated-foreigners-no-matter-how-small-the-cost, and you're making that sound.

But there are other things in this. Clearly there is so enormous a chasm between Marichiko's worldview and mine that neither of us can even reliably perceive the other's important core values, let alone understand or appreciate them. Sure, not taking casualties is preferable to taking casualties -- but that is not an option in a general war, and this one is far more general than bombing targets in Kosovo. We have no known enemies who are too incompetent to blood some of us and kill others. The measure of the worthiness of America's cause is not to be found in our soldiers not getting hurt.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The measure of the worthiness of America's cause is not to be found in our soldiers not getting hurt.

The worthiness of soldiers is not found in dispatching them to self serving political causes - such as fixing the Middle East only for the greater glory of "Project for a New American Century". A truly respected soldier is deployed for reasons justified by a smoking gun. If a US soldier was indeed respected, then soldiers would have been in Afghanistan - hundreds of thousands - to find, capture, or destroy the real enemy.... Osama bin Laden. A deployment so worthy that even NATO would deployed for the same objectives. A deployment so worthy that even former Soviet Republics and Libya's Kadaffi endorsed and supported that objective.

Instead a US president would lie - blame Saddam - so that soldiers would be deployed for a personal political agenda. Lie to even alienate NATO allies. Like in Vietnam, lie so that American soldiers have doubt about their mission. Lie so that even the Defense Department now changes the parameters of victory - to minimize the possible impact of defeat.

How could a government so disrespect its soldiers? We are supposed to have learned from Vietnam to never do that again to the American soldier. We have so disrespected the American soldier that Osama bin Laden still runs free.

Osama bin Laden still runs free. Those with respect for the American soldier and American principles would never have let that happen. Why is Urbane Guerrilla so silent about disrespect for the American soldier and American principles?